Commentary on pro-family issues in the media, politics and in the public square.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Obama and radical positions on abortion...and infanticide

There are two reasons Barack Obama will have a difficult time winning the White House -- his inexperience and very liberal positions.

Good examples of the latter include his support for repealing the Defense of Marriage Act which defines marriage, for purposes of federal law, as between one man and one woman and protects the right of states to refuse to recognize homosexual marriages from other states.

On the issue of abortion, notwithstanding efforts to appear more moderate, he has as radical a record as they come. He, in fact, is more radical than most pro-abortion members of Congress.

A case in point is his opposition to the Illinois Infant's Born Alive Act while serving in the Illinois legislature in 2003. The Act would have protected babies born alive after surviving an attempted abortion.

According to National Right to Life Committee Douglas Johnson:

"Newly obtained documents prove that in 2003, Barack Obama, as chairman of an Illinois state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion — even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion. Obama's legislative actions in 2003 — denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions — were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress. The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose."

Obama said there were major difference between the Illinois bill and the one passed by Congress. The federal bill ultimately passed with a "neutrality" clause stating that the bill didn't address the status of unborn babies and thus implicate Roe v. Wade. Obama said the Illinois bill didn't contain this "neutrality" provision and therefore he opposed it. The fact is the original language in Congress didn't address the status of unborn babies in its wording and the clause was merely window dressing. In the US House, liberal, pro-abortion Democrat members of the House Judiciary Committee, with only one exception, voted for the bill without the "neutrality" clause. In addition, it passed the full House without a neutrality provision on a 380 to 15 vote.

Based on his vote in Illinois, Obama would have been among the 15 members who voted against the bill.

One can't get much more radical on abortion and infanticide than that. He was unwilling to protect babies once they were born outside the womb.

This is another example of Obama being significantly out of step with the American people.